Sunday Book Review

Letters: American Punishment

May 29, 2014

American Punishment

To the Editor:

I welcome David Cole’s insights on my book “Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment” (May 18), but one of them cannot be allowed to stand. The suggestion that we may be turning the corner or reaching a “tipping point” on unjust incarceration ignores the mentality, the numbers, the sentencing structure and parole policies of state prisons and jails all across the country. We may differ on the historical numbers too, but the problems reach far beyond them to what punishment has become in America. As someone who has worked for years with people in prison recently wrote to me, “prison reform in the United States is like renovating a house on fire.”

ROBERT A. FERGUSONNEW YORK

The writer is the George Edward Woodberry professor in law, literature and criticism at Columbia University.

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To the Editor:

In his review of “Inferno,” David Cole sees mass incarceration as a relatively recent development and dismisses the idea that it reflects longstanding American traditions and values. However, he ignores our country’s extensive history of brutal punishment.

Nineteenth-century prisons routinely tortured inmates, using water torture and other techniques. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery, but exempted prison inmates from its protection. For decades after Reconstruction, the convict-lease system consigned tens of thousands of African-Americans to hellish conditions that cost many of them their lives. For most of the 20th century, prison inmates were “civilly dead,” losing many of their civil rights when convicted of a felony. Finally, those operating juvenile facilities and mental institutions have often had free rein to sexually assault inmates and patients.

Such a history of institutional cruelty cries out for a thoughtful and honest discussion of violence and American values. Rather than offering such a discussion, Cole embraces a superficial and ahistorical approach to ­punishment.

DEREK S. JEFFREYSGREEN BAY, WIS.

The writer is a professor of humanistic studies and religion, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and the author of “Spirituality in Dark Places: The Ethics of Solitary Confinement.”

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To the Editor:

How can David Cole discuss the American addiction to incarceration with only a single fleeting reference to race?

The burden of our penchant for locking people up falls overwhelmingly on poor black men. Cole notes that this increase started in the mid-1970s under President Nixon, but does not mention that the “war on crime” and mass incarceration coincided with the end of legal racial segregation. As Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander and many others have argued, this timing was not coincidental. To speculate on the deep psychological roots of America’s love affair with prisons without discussing race is both shortsighted and disingenuous.

ALAN MILLSCHICAGO

The writer is the legal director of the Uptown People’s Law Center.

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American Visionary

To the Editor:

Robert W. Merry, in his thoughtful review of my book “John Quincy Adams: American Visionary” (May 4), faults its pro-Adams view of the politics of the period. Merry seems to accept the view of Andrew Jackson cultivated by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Robert V. Remini, Jon Meacham and H. W. Brands. Adams, though, was right to think Jackson’s core public policies bad for the country — anti-federal-government, anti-bank, anti-paper-currency, anti-commerce, anti-Indian and pro-slavery. His closest affiliation today would be with the Tea Party.

Jackson’s damaging presidency has been whitewashed by his modern biographers who equate a successful presidency with an active, aggressive president, almost regardless of content. I think that Adams, politically, morally and in regard to America’s future, was mostly in the right.

FRED KAPLANBOOTHBAY, ME.

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Children and the Holocaust

To the Editor:

I was shocked that your reviewer Elizabeth Wein recommended a picture book titled “The Whispering Town” (April 6) for children as young as 5, terming it “appropriate for reading to very young children as an introduction to the subject of the Holocaust.”

I firmly believe that young people of all religious backgrounds should learn about the Holocaust, and I’m heartened that many high schools across the country have courses about this dark period in world history.

But I can’t understand why anyone would think that this tale of a mother and child in hiding, a missing father and Nazi soldiers accompanied by “bales of barbed wire” would be suitable for a kindergartner. Young children often have nightmares after hearing classic fairy tales — “made up” stories from another time and place. How much worse it seems for them to hear about horrors that could happen to them or their parents, the people who are supposed to keep them safe.

What’s to be gained from exposing very young children to some of the worst history our world has known? Why would this reviewer think that recommending this book is a good idea? What’s to be lost by protecting childhood for a little while longer?

SALLY WENDKOS OLDSNEW YORK

The writer is the author or co-author of several books about child development and family life, including the college textbook “A Child’s World.”